Birthday #1

Happy Birthday, Charlie!  It seems like just yesterday that we were in the hospital preparing for your arrival.  We went to the doctor today and he is still very skinny at 20 pounds (10%) but has gotten a little taller at 29.5 inches (50%).  He got a great report from the pedi and escaped with only 1 shot and one blood draw.  He has a total of 8 teeth, 4 on top, 4 on bottom, with more to come shortly I'm sure.  He's chewing on his hands and drooling a lot.  He is not walking yet, but we are practicing with the new push toy he got for his birthday.  It won't be long now.  Not sure I'm ready for that just yet! He sleeps from about 6:30-7pm to about 630-7:30am.  And he takes one morning nap for about 1-1.5 hours and an afternoon nap for about the same amount of time. No complaints there!  He is saying Mama and Dada and can wave bye bye and also sign for milk.  He's pretty much fully weaned and on mostly cow's milk until we run out of the frozen stash of breast milk.  I achieved my personal goal of breastfeeding for his first year.  No small feat, but definitely worth it.  Now the next challenge is getting rid of his bottle.  Sort of ironic since it was a battle to get him to actually drink from one consistently! He truly is a blessing and a joy.  We love him to pieces and can't wait to see what the future holds for us.

For those of you interested, we took some birthday pics on Monday.  Check out this website www.mindyrathe.com to see the sneak peeks!